When?

I am the patient type. I am not given to complaining and I try to keep the long view. I am perhaps a russian little red dog. But I have had almost enough.

When will it be nice outside? When will I be able to eat grass and throw it back up just as quickly? When will I be able to sniff the flowers of spring and smile at the sunshine and when will I be able to go for long walks and not have to endure having my feet dried off so unsympathetically by my Person? When will I be able to snooze on the back step in the sun? When will I be able to knock Adric out of the window sill where he should be sleeping in the sun? When will the sun come out again?

This midwestern weather is playing tricks on us all. Just when we've started to shed our winter clothes, and fur, the snow starts again. The mud is cold and stiff. The river is deep and dark. The loons can't fly north because the lakes are still frozen so they are stacking up like barge traffic in the Mississippi River. This just should not happen.

All day I stay inside listening to the thin snores of sleeping cats, the tap tap tap of my Person at work, the drip drip drip of slush as it trickles down the drainpipe. And the sounds of my own sighs. I cannot wait until spring decides to stay for awhile.

Prairie dog

Regard the prairie - level your gaze upon the horizon. Ponder the meaning of all things. Then roll around in the little blue stem and collect your first ticks of the season.

I am a country dog. In fact, the place I was found running wild all these many years ago, before I came to live with my person, was called the Prairie of the Dogs. Only in French. Maybe the French settlers were referring to the oodles of local prairie dogs, something like gophers in appearance, but I prefer to think they were casting their minds forward to the day when Finnegan, a little red real and not-at-all-gopherlike dog, would be roaming in that very place.

I felt at home on my visit to this prairie with my Person and my Best Friend, and the ticks I found felt very at home on me. Unfortunately for them my Person has a sharp eye and they lost out on a trip to the big city. They are still on the prairie even now, perhaps still clutching bits of red fur in their sticky little paws, and gazing at the tire marks we left behind.

But the season is early and I am sure that I will have more beautiful prairie walks this summer and collect more ticks for my Person to find hidden in my fur like I could hide in this place for many happy hours.

Quick change

Would you like to sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me?? Well, no matter who you sit with you'd better have snow pants. Maybe not for today because all that snow is ALREADY gone again but just as likely it will be back next week. It is the silly season for weather.

Today a little dove was sitting under the apple tree, in the mud. Me too, later on. The birds keep showing up from their winter vacations, the ones that are snow birds, not the ones that tough it out up here in the polar regions like I do. Some of the birds that hang around all season are beginning to wear their brighter summer gear. I guess I am changing my gear too - little clumps of my winter coat seem to stay on the couch after I leave the scene. I hope the weather decides to stay warm before I am down to my little red shorts!

We are Siamese if you please

Well, I don't please! Can you believe what I am cooped up with today?

The only retreat is outdoors, and I did go out for a romp but I got hit in the head with slush balls falling out of the trees. I got more soaked than I have since the last time I had a bath and that was so long ago my memory of it is a bit hazy. Acutely terrifying but hazy.

I like snow but the slop falling out of the sky today was not quite snow. It didn't please me any more than those Siamese do. As a matter of fact I am just a bit of a testy little red dog. I didn't get to use up my energy allotment for the day and I don't know what to do with the rest of it. I can't save it for tomorrow. I am not a global warming culprit - I am supposed to be using lots of energy, running at all hours and rarely powered down.

I could rest on my nice mattress but Guess Who and his brother Guess Who Else are all over it like two cheap suits. So I will mope, alone, in the dark, on the couch. Maybe Someone will take the hint and give those two bookends the boot but she seems particularly preoccupied. Or unobservant. Maybe a slush ball hit her head a little too hard.

I'm just hoping tomorrow is an improvement.

Tuckered

Gosh, I need to rest up. It hasn't been so much action that has gotten to me as a lot of people stuff going on. You know the social whirl can wear a little red dog out!

I have been visited by my human grandparents and cousins and uncle and aunts and my sheltie cousin. I have acted the gracious host for days on end: I have let the sheltie play with my belongings (under close supervision of course, you can't trust anything with a head that narrow), kept the cousins happy with my perfect dog routine, and showed the sheltie up by using comparatively good sense on a walk (smart dogs don't chase cars!). I sat on my grandfather's lap and kept him calm, and made soft eyes at everyone else to make them feel appreciated. I scared the bejeezus out of my girl cousin with my runaway dog trick while off leash, and kept her and her brother company in the art studio, always inspiring them with my shining enthusiasm for art and squirrel-watching out of the studio windows.

Today the relatives left and I finally got a little outdoor, countryside action with my Person and aunt veecee. We saw a big mother owl with little fuzzy young owls, birds of blue and rust and brown and black. We saw ducks and geese and vultures. We saw flying insects. We saw the proof that spring is coming.

Pretty soon when we look outside we will see a snow storm. The weather here is more mercurial than I am.

The fresh air took its toll on one who had been so busy seeing to the needs of other. I am a bit tuckered and I think I need a little rest.

Logged on

I am an educated dog. I've been through four levels of training. And I still can't understand what my Person does all day. Why she sits for hours, moving one hand around, muttering and scratching her head, is a puzzlement.

Today I spent several hours on the back step sleeping in the spring sun. There was room for her on the next step (well, part of her would have fit) but was she there? No, she was in front of this screen muttering and scratching her head.

Later I was snoozing and stretching out on the couch. There would have been room for her there if I had cared to shove over but was she interested? No, she was still sitting in front of this screen moving that mouse around some more and muttering and scratching her head.

I wonder if I can get some sort of help for her - there is so much important going on like mud getting warm again, and doves landing in the bird bath with their pink toes stretched out, and a merlin flying fast over the trees and last year's plants straightening up a bit and leaning toward the sun and blades of grass turning green. She's missing it! She thinks she is connected but from a little red dog perspective she is as disconnected as can be!

Polar bear club

The snow continues to fall even as the sun gets higher in the sky and the ground wants to warm up. Big icy puddles are showing up, just right for little red dogs to go wading in. You might think I would get chilled doing this but I need to cool off when I have been jumping over snowy drifts and running across the frozen lake and chasing scents among the reeds faster than any other dog ever did.

I was supervised by lots of worried chickadees. I am sure they thought I was a wild red fox.

One of these days soon the snow will stop falling on my head and this wonderful playground will revert to its summer state of marsh and unfrozen lake and the fun will be over until next winter, so I am relishing it while I can. Some Persons are tired of winter and dream of planting their gardens and walking in the sun but today I think I am a snow dog at heart.